4 Easy Ways to Pay Your Bills on Time

Managing bills and bill payments often becomes a dreaded task. Find out how to get it all under control.

4 Easy Solutions to Pay Your Bills on Time

When I was 18 and first living on my own, I had no real system for paying bills. I would just dig into a messy stack of envelopes whenever payday rolled around and pay whatever I had enough money for. It was a confusing crapshoot, and eventually things got out of control—bills went unpaid and debts began rising. Thankfully, I’ve learned a lot over the years and technology has improved greatly, making it much easier to keep track of things.

Here are 4 ways to get organized and get your bills and payments under control.

1. Write everything down. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling suggests getting everything down in one place—essentially take inventory of what payments you are responsible for each month.

Take one month and write down every single bill that comes in, what the payment amount is, if there is any overdue amount and whether there’s any outstanding debt. There’s no way to get things under control if you don’t know what needs controlling.

2. Prioritize. Prioritizing is particularly important if you’re already behind. I suggest making sure that housing and basic utilities like electricity are paid first. Once you’ve paid what’s most important, you can continue handling housing expenses first, then prioritize the rest by due date.

Tip: If you have revolving debt (such as student loans and medical bills) that you’re behind on, call the companies to discuss your options. If you do this before being sent to collection, most companies will be willing to work with you.

3. Go electronic. If you haven’t already switched to paperless billing, do so as soon as possible. This will eliminate a lot of the confusing paper clutter and important bills are less likely to get accidentally thrown away or misplaced. Plus, you’ll get email reminders and follow ups, making it less likely that you will miss or be late for a payment.

Once you’re set up you can make online payments in mere minutes, so you won’t have to wait days for the company to receive a check in the mail.

4. Automatic payments. It might be scary for you to imagine funds being withdrawn from your bank account without you physically hitting the submit button, but automatic payments take the guesswork out of bill paying. Set them up for anything and everything that you can. You’ll have one less thing to think about. Just make sure the money is there when it needs to be and you’re good to go.